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COMMUNICATIONS - NETWORK APPLICATIONS - INTERNET - E-MAIL

Internet (Information Superhighway)

The information superhighway or simply Internet is one of the most important developments in the history of information systems. It is growing fast. The Internet is not one network, but tens of thousands of networks linked together. In other words, it is a large network made up of thousands of smaller networks. Internet does not have overall central administration, because it is a collection of thousands of smaller networks. Internet provides four basic functions to its users:


E-mail on the Internet

Electronic mail (E-mail) is one of the most rapidly growing developments in networked communications. Users of E-mail have their own file stored on a computer system. This file can be called a "mailbox." Access to a person's mailbox is protected by means of a password. Once logged on to an E-mail account, an end user may send messages and files to other mailboxes. An individual electronic mail transmission may be sent to one or many recipient accounts. This person may also read messages that have "arrived" in her or his mailbox from other E-mail accounts.

One of the main advantages of using E-mail is confidentiality. No one can access an individual's mailbox without knowledge of the password. E-mail also allows recipients to know the exact transmission times for each incoming message. Popular uses of E-mail have been to set up meetings within business organizations and to distribute memoranda throughout an organization. E-mail is increasing in popularity for communication between businesses. The main reasons for this are speed and cost; there is no reason to spend postage on a letter that will take three to seven days to arrive when electronic mail could be used for virtually nothing and arrive instantaneously.

Anyone with access to the Internet can send E-mail to anyone else on the Internet. Internet E-mail addresses have two parts, the individual user's account address and the address of the computer. The computer's address in turn has two parts, the computer name and its domain. The general format is therefore: user@computer.domain. Note that the "at" symbol (@) separates the user's account from the computer address, and that a period separates the name of the computer from its domain. Some computer names also have several parts separated by periods, so some addresses may have the format: user@computer.computer.computer.domain (e.g., user@sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu)



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